Up to 90% of school leavers in major Asian cities are suffering from myopia — short-sightedness, a study suggests. Researchers say the “extraordinary rise” in the problem is being caused by students working very hard in school and missing out on outdoor light.

    Eye experts say that you are short-sighted if your vision is blurred(模糊的) beyond 2m. It is often caused by an elongation (拉伸) of the eyeball that happens when people are young. According to the research, the problem is being caused by a combination of factors — a commitment to education and lack of outdoor light.

    Professor Morgan who led this study argues that many children in South East Asia spend long hours studying at school and doing their homework. This in itself puts pressure on the eyes, but exposure to between two and three hours of daylight helps maintain healthy eyes.

    Cultural factors also seem to play a part. Across many parts of South East Asian children often have a lunchtime nap. According to Professor Morgan they are missing out on natural light to prevent short-sightedness.

    A big concern is the numbers of the students suffering from “high” myopia. One in five of these students could experience severe visual impairment(障碍) and even blindness. These people are at considerable risk-sometimes people are not told about it and are just given more powerful glasses-they need to be warned about the risk and given some self-testing measures so they can get to an ophthalmologist and get some help.

    For decades, researchers believed there was a strong genetic component to the condition. But this study strongly suggests an alternative view. “Any type of simple genetic explanation just doesn't fit with that speed of change; gene pools just don't change in two generations. Whether it's a purely environmental effect or an environmental effect playing a sensitive genome, it really doesn't matter, the thing that's changed is not the gene pool—it's the environment.”

    In its early history, Chicago had floods frequently, especially in the spring, making the streets so muddy that people, horses, and carts got stuck. An old joke that was popular at the time went something like this：A man is stuck up to his waist in a muddy Chicago street. Asked if he needs help, he replies, "No, thanks. I've got a good horse under me."

    The city planner decided to build an underground drainage （排水） system, but there simply wasn't enough difference between the height of the ground level and the water level. The only two options were to lower the Chicago River or raise the city.

    An engineer named Ellis Chesbrough convinced the city that it had no choice but to build the pipes above ground and then cover them with dirt. This raised the level of the city's streets by as much as 12 feet.

    This of course created a new problem: dirt practically buried the first floors of every building in Chicago. Building owners were faced with a choice: either change the first floors of their buildings into basements, and the second stories into main floors, or hoist the entire buildings to meet the new street level. Small wood-frame buildings could be lifted fairly easily. But what about large, heavy structures like Tremont Hotel, which was a six-story brick building?

    That's where George Pullman came in. He had developed some house-moving skills successfully. To lift a big structure like the Tremont Hotel, Pullman would place thousands of jackscrews （螺旋千斤顶） beneath the building's foundation. One man was assigned to operate each section of roughly 10jackscrews.At Pullman's signal each man tured his jackscrew the same amount at the same time, thereby raising the building slowly and evenly. Astonishingly, the Tremont Hotel stay open during the entire operation, and many of its guests didn't even notice anything was happening.

    Some people like to say that every problem has a solution. But in Chicago's early history, every engineering solution seemed to create a new problem. Now that Chicago's waste water was draining efficiently into the Chicago River, the city's next step was to clean the polluted river.

    We know that hugs make us feel easy inside. And this feeling could actually ward off stress and protect the immune (免疫) system,  according to a new research from Carnegie Mellon University.

    It's a well-known fact that stress can weaken the immune system. In this study, the researchers sought to determine whether hugs could protect individuals from the increased sensitivity to illness brought on by the particular stress that comes with interpersonal conflict.

    "We know that people experiencing ongoing conflicts with others are less able to fight off cold viruses. We also know that people who report having social support are partly protected from the effects of stress on psychological states, such as depression and anxiety," the study's lead author, psychologist Dr. Sheldon Cohen , said in a statement. "We have tested whether awareness of social support is equally effective in protecting us from sensitivity to infection caused by stress and also whether receiving hugs might partially account for those feelings of support and thus protect a person against infection."

    In the experiment, over 400 healthy adults filled out a questionnaire about their perceived (感知到的) social support and also participated in a nightly phone interview for two weeks. They were asked about the frequency that they engaged in interpersonal conflict and received hugs that day.

    Then, the researchers exposed the participants to a common cold virus, and monitored them to assess signs of infection. They found that both perceived social support and more frequent hugs reduced the risk of infection associated with experiencing interpersonal conflict. Regardless of whether or not they experienced social conflicts, infected participants with greater perceived social support and more frequent hugs had less severe illness symptoms.

    "This suggests that being hugged by a trusted person may act as an effective means of conveying support and that increasing the frequency of hugs might be an effective means of reducing the effects of stress," Cohen said. "The apparent protective effect of hugs may result from the physical contact itself or hugging being a behavioral indicator of support and closeness. Either way, those who receive more hugs are somewhat more protected from infection."

    If you need any more reason to wrap your arms around someone special, consider this: hugs also lower blood pressure, reduce fears, improve heart health and decrease feelings of loneliness.

Let Kids with Cancer Be Kids Again!

    We care about the needs of kids with cancer

    Camp quality originated in 1983 in Sydney, Australia. The camp was created to give kids with cancer and their family a place to interact with other children and have an extraordinary summer. Activities are designed with kids in mind such as swimming, fishing, arts and crafts, and even the beloved campfires.

    Companions and volunteers

    The safety of campers and staff(员工)is of top priority to Camp Quality Arkansas. Each staff member is required to attend a training session. Within these sessions, each potential staff member gets to know the program and then a decision is made to decide whether he or she will fit best in the camp.

    "In all of our volunteers we look for adults who can lead with their own actions and have a child-like spirit. This ability to have fun is essential to the success of the camp. While the companions work directly with the campers, we are always on the lookout for volunteers to fill the positions of RNs, certified lifeguards, photographers, and kitchen staff," said Amber Dovel, volunteer coordinators at Camp Quality Arkansas.

    A unique function of the camp is that for each kid a companion is assigned. A companion is a reminder of "hope, courage, and happiness, not only during the week of camp, but all year round," according to the official website.

    Contact us

    For more information visit www.campqualityusa.org or contact Director, Chris Jennings at Chris. Jennings@camoqualityusa.org.

    Dave Merry and his tools have been through a lot together. The tools helped Dave, now 80, repair his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he and his wife, Annette Merry, lived for 46 years and raised three children. The table saw, the jointer plane, the drill press, and the dozens of other power and hand tools had pride of place in his carefully organized workshop. "I had a whole setup, and it was beautiful," says Dave, a retired engineer.

    But then Annette experienced a stroke (中风) that left her relying on a walker to get around, and the Merrys decided to move into assisted living. Dave's workshop was obviously a minor consideration given Annette's condition, but the family knew that giving it up, on top of everything else, would hurt.

    It was the Merrys' daughter who came up with a possible solution. She'd heard about some people who were setting up a tool library—a nonprofit facility that would lend out tools just as a regular library lends books. Might Dad be interested in donating his?

    "I said yes," Dave says.

    The people creating the St. Paul Tool Library were thrilled. They had expected it would take a year to collect enough tools to make their facility fully functional. Instead it took one day: the day Dave donated his.

    The library's founders drove over to the Merrys' house and picked everything up themselves. The library is housed in the basement of the American Can Factory. Members pay an annual fee (from $20 to $120) for unlimited tool use and a varying number of visits to the workshop. And they get an extra benefit: Dave Merry. "Almost every time we're open, Dave's here," says one of the founders, Peter Hoh. "It means a lot to me to be able to go and use my tools," Dave says. "But it means just as much to help DIYers use the tools properly."

    As Hoh puts it, "This is his workshop now."

Would a person born blind, who has learned to distinguish objects by touch, be able to recognize them purely by sight if he regained the ability to see? The question, known as Mołyneux's problem, is about whether the human mind has a built-in concept of shapes that is so inborn that a blind person could immediately recognize an object with restored vision. Alternatively, the concepts of shapes are not inborn but have to be learned by exploring an object through sight, touch and other senses.

After their attempt to test it in blind children failed, Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London and his team carried out another experiment on bumblebees. To test whether bumblebees can form an internal representation of objects, they first trained the insects to distinguish globes from cubes using a sugar reward. The bees were first trained in the light, where they could see but not touch the objects. Then they were tested in the dark, where they could touch but not see the items. The researchers found that the insects spent more time in contact with the shape they had been trained to associate with the sugar reward, even though they had to rely on touch rather than sight to distinguish the objects.

The researchers also did the opposite test with untrained bumblebees, first teaching them with rewards in the dark and then testing them in the light. Again, the bees were able to recognize the shape associated with the sugar reward, though they had to rely on sight rather than touch in the test. In short, bees have solved Molyneux's problem because the fact suggests that they can picture object features and access them through sight or touch.

However, some experts express their warnings against the result. Jonathan Birch, a philosopher of science, cautions that the bees may have had prior experience associating visual and tactile (触觉) information about straight edges and curved surfaces in their nests.